Florence Nightingale

Nightingale took thirty-eight nurses to the military hospital at Scutari during the Crimean War and cut the death rate by attacking the sewers, the laundry and the food. She was also a formidable statistician, inventing diagrams that made mortality data impossible to ignore.

She declined a state funeral and a place in Westminster Abbey. Her family grave carries only her initials and her dates, at her own instruction.